Heart Math Solution & Heart Coherence...What I've learned.

In this episode Lunden is talking about what she has learned over the past 3 years in meditation and diving deep into the the work of the Heart Math Institute and the truth behind brain & heart coherence. This isn't your typical episode with Lunden coaching as much as it is an insight into Lunden's learning process over the last 3 years.

Check Out Heart Math Solution Book Right Here.
Heart Math Institute: https://www.heartmath.com/

Transcript

Lunden Souza: [00:00:00] Welcome to Self Love and Sweat the podcast, the place where you'll get inspired to live your life unapologetically, embrace your perfect imperfections, break down barriers, and do what sets your soul on fire. I'm your host Lunden Souza.

Lunden Souza: [00:00:20] Hey, have you grabbed your free self love and sweat monthly calendar yet? This calendar is so amazing. It comes right in your inbox every single month to help you have a little nugget of wisdom, a sweaty workout, a mindset activity, just a little something. Something to help keep you focused and motivated and keep that momentum towards your goals. So every day when you get this calendar, you'll see a link that you can click that will lead to a podcast episode or a workout or something that will be very powerful and quick to read. And then you'll also see on the top left corner of every single day there's a little checkbox in the calendar. And what that is, is that's for your one thing. You can choose one thing every month, or it can be the same something that you want to implement and make this something that you can easily implement, like daily meditation or getting a certain amount of steps or water, for example, and staying hydrated and even taking your supplements. This can be something, if you want to get more regular, doing a particular habit and routine, you can choose what that checkbox means. So if you want your self love and sweat free monthly calendar delivered right to your inbox every month on the first of the month, go to lifelikelunden.com/calendar. Fill out the form really quickly and you will have your calendar and your inbox within a few short minutes. That's lifelikelunden.com/calendar Go get yours for free and enjoy this episode.

Lunden Souza: [00:01:52] Happy today welcome to our episode in this episode. This is kind of different than what I normally do in terms of setting up a structure and then coaching. In this episode we're talking about opening up your heart Heartmath your heart, brain coherence. And this is a topic that I first got introduced to in 2020 when I went to a meditation retreat with Dr. Joe Dispenza, and this was in Cancun, Mexico. It was really awesome. I had just moved back to America from Austria in June and I knew there was this retreat coming up. I had been practicing the meditations and reading the books of Dr. Joe Dispenza, and I had the opportunity to go for a week long meditation retreat, and that's where I was first introduced to this concept and this feeling at a deeper level of opening up your heart and heart coherence and heart intelligence. And yeah, so in this episode I wanted to basically like pull the curtain or yeah, I would say like let you see behind the curtain of my mind in the sense of I love to learn. I think learning is probably my favorite thing of all time.

Lunden Souza: [00:03:16] I always think about the things that I love. So learning is one of my favorites. And this particular topic, like I said, has been profound in my life. Or if I haven't said that, it has been profound in my life and I've been continuing to learn about it over the last three years. I've read a book in particular or listen to a book. It's an audiobook or I listen to the audiobook version of it, but I've listened to the book, The Heartmath Solution, a few times on Audible, and it's a really powerful, really short, amazing listen. So I highly suggest that you listen to it or read the book if you are interested in this topic after listening, or maybe right now you're already Googling the book. The book is called The Heartmath The Heartmath Solution The Institute of Heart Math's Revolutionary Program for Engaging the Power of the Heart's Intelligence. And it's a wonderful listen, like I said, and I have some notes in my phone that I've been taking as I've been listening, whether I've been walking or traveling or whatever. As I listen to books, usually I'll pop open a note on my phone and write down like Aha moments or certain things that have really spoken out to me. And so, yeah, that's what I want to do today. So first I want to kind of give you an overview or an idea of what this Heartmath solution is, what the Heartmath Institute is studying and proving and showing and really what that heart brain connection is.

Lunden Souza: [00:04:45] And so for the book, I really love the the description of the book. It says, Access the power of your heart's intelligence to improve your focus and creativity, elevate your emotional clarity, lower your stress and anxiety levels, strengthen your immune system, promote your body's optimal performance, and slow the aging process. So that's the like snippet of the book. And when it comes to Heartmath, think about. This. And I'm going to read you something from the Heart math science section from their website. Like I said, I'm just learning as I'm talking to you and processing and researching and so on their website it says The heart brain Connection. Most of us have been taught in school that the heart is constantly responding to orders sent by the brain in the form of neural signals. However, it's not as commonly known that the heart actually sends more signals to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. Moreover, these signals have a significant effect on brain function influencing emotional emotional processing, as well as higher cognitive faculties such as attention, perception, memory and problem solving. In other words, not only does the heart respond to the brain, but the brain continuously responds to the heart. The effect of heart activity on brain function has been researched extensively over about the past 40 years. Earlier, research mainly examined the effects of heart activity occurring on a very short time scale over several consecutive heartbeats at maximum.

Lunden Souza: [00:06:23] Scientists at the Heartmath Institute have extended this body of scientific research by looking at how larger scale patterns of heart activity affect the brain's functioning. The Heartmath Institute research has demonstrated that different patterns of heart activity which accompany different emotional states, have distinct effects on cognitive and emotional function during stress and negative emotions, when the heart rhythm pattern is erratic and disordered. The corresponding pattern of neural signals traveling from the heart to the brain inhibits the higher cognitive functions. This limits our ability to think clearly, remember, learn, reason, and make effective decisions. And I think we can all think about a moment in time or maybe many moments in time where we felt that during stress. And this helps explain why we may often act impulsively and unwisely when we're under stress. The heart's input to the brain during stressful or negative emotions also has a profound effect on the brain's emotional processes, actually serving to reinforce the emotional experience of stress. Last paragraph. In contrast, the more ordered and stable pattern of the heart's input to the brain during positive emotional states has the opposite effect. It facilitates cognitive function and reinforces positive feelings and emotional stability. This means that learning to generate increased heart rhythm coherence by sustaining positive emotions not only benefits the entire body, but also profoundly affects how we perceive, think, feel and perform.

Lunden Souza: [00:07:58] Yes, that was a lot. And when I read that earlier, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so good. I have to share that. And I think we can all think of moments where, whether we're familiar with heart coherence or not, I think we can imagine a moment of stress where we weren't able to fully hear ourselves, our intuition, all the things. And then, like what? I just read it like it impacts our ability to make decisions and think clearly and show up our best and show up fully. And so, like I said, this concept of heart coherence and opening up the heart happened for me when I was in Cancun, Mexico, doing this meditation retreat with Dr. Joe Dispenza. And that's really what we did for hours and hours and hours on end with the idea that like repetitions in fitness, right? We do the reps, we get the impact. And when it comes to our thought patterns and our personal reality based on how we've been showing up, thinking, behaving, feeling, all the things, that's been on repeat, we know how to do that. We are doing that and getting set outcome. So the idea behind this heart math and opening up your heart and the meditation I experienced, coupled with it is that you practice feeling a different type of way for extended hours, right? We can think of a whole day that we've been in a certain state.

Lunden Souza: [00:09:15] Sad, angry, upset, frustrated. So the idea is that we practice spending full days in this state of heart coherence and bliss and love and joy and curiosity and wonder. And it's such a beautiful experience. And I know that some of you listening might be like, okay, London Yeah. You just sit and like, think positively. Like, you know, what is that? You know? Yes, there's a lot more to it. And I'm not going to go into a lot of depth about the meditation and different stuff like that, but really it is. Getting still. And bringing up the evidence of joy or positivity that we've experienced before and allow ourselves to stay there and relive that. And it can be an experience that we've experienced before or even one when we dream about our future and our dreams and our goals, and we get that elevated state and our heart opens and we can just get excited and we might feel a certain type of way that's just like, Oh, you know, I love that, and that sounds so great. And so the idea is to stay in that space and to have activities in ways to yeah, check yourself before you wreck yourself or just like check yourself and come back to that space. And what I've found most importantly is. A tremendous sense of love for where I am in the here and now, but also, like I found that that's the magnet to getting more of what you want.

Lunden Souza: [00:10:45] Being in that state of gratitude, being in that state of joy. Now, that doesn't mean that you're always going to experiences, experience, circumstances that elicit that. And at the same time, we can feel that for a while and then decide to choose joy. Decide to choose bliss. Decide to choose this more heart open space, especially in our everyday situations where we might find ourselves, you know, just like like because of this now, you know, and in this like closed off, very negative, very like limited possibility space. And instead we get a chance to open up to the possibilities and open up to the gratitude ahead of time. And I personally have found miraculous effects through this process of generating abundance, generating feelings of of happiness, genuine happiness and contentment even more so. And also, you know, life is going to ebb and flow. And if we allow things outside of us to control how we feel internally, we're going to be on a wild roller coaster ride. And so we might as well learn to get to know our emotions and get to know things that come up. Feel them. Decide what that means, and then choose something more empowering. And the idea behind this practice and hours of meditation and heart coherence, which, by the way, you only have to do, you know, five minutes at the start or whatever. But the idea is to intercept that autopilot is to be like, okay, I've practiced this feeling, I know what it feels like.

Lunden Souza: [00:12:23] And this is more familiar than the old feeling that I used to feel when said circumstances, said circumstance would arise. Does that make sense? Okay. We have to take a quick break for me to tell you about the DU skin tinted moisturizer from beauty counter. I am obsessed with it. In fact, I think obsessed is kind of an understatement because I've been using it every single day for like the last four months. It's the perfect makeup, but no makeup kind of in between moisturizer with 20 SPF. It has that good see through hydrating coverage, but it doesn't have full coverage like a foundation. I have been loving it. It feels so good. It makes my morning routine so much faster and simpler and I feel so much more alive and awake and rejuvenated throughout the day. And honestly, it helps remind me to put on sunscreen daily on my face because if my moisturizer doesn't have SPF in it, I'm probably not going to put SPF on my skin in the morning, not because I don't want to. It's just like sometimes I forget all the steps. So I love that I can combine moisturizer with coverage and SPF all inside the du tinted moisturizer. So I use a number four. You're going to want to choose a number that works best for your skin tone. But for those of you that have followed me on Instagram, you can see my skin tone.

Lunden Souza: [00:13:44] You can kind of compare a little bit and you can also take a skin quiz to figure out exactly what coverage color tint works best for you. So you'll be able to do that in case you want a little bit more help. So how do you get this product and how do you get it at a discount? I know you're wondering, so the code is clean for all 20 at checkout for 20% off your entire first purchase at Beauty counter and you're going to shop at beauty counter.com/london Souza that's beauty counter b e a u t y c o u n t e r.com/london s o u z a and you can shop there using your code clean for all 20. That's clean for trail, 20 for 20% off at checkout for your first purchase. So go ahead and grab that. It's perfect for your everyday morning hydrating, sun protecting, rejuvenating, brightening skincare routine. You're going to love it. Grab yours today. So yeah, maybe we can just all do that together for a second. I hadn't planned this, but I think it's a nice space to get. So wherever you are, just think of something that brings you joy, whether it's, you know, an experience or your kids or a feeling that you just know you feel when you're in that state of just like, Oh, this is awesome. I totally want to be here.

Lunden Souza: [00:15:17] Or maybe it's when, you know, you had an unexpected surprise, whether it was like a bonus at work or someone acknowledged you in a way where you're just heart was so open and just so happy and joyful. And when we breathe into our heart space and do that. And just focus on that feeling, I feel like. That's so much better and a much better option than to get caught up in stirring the pot and get caught up at being at effect. Like everything is just like, you know, affecting me. And, you know, I have no control over my own emotions or my own feelings or most importantly, my own reactions to some of that inner turmoil or inner experience. Right? And so, yeah, I think that's a great place to be. So, um, I took some notes on my phone and I guess that's where I want to go next and share those with you. Um, and actually it was really so I guess I'll backtrack a little bit and talk about how in heart math and in what I'm talking about, it's not about, you know, only being positive and only feeling positivity or anything like that. It's really about understanding what happens to our body's physiology and performance and all those things when we do choose a space of heart coherence while acknowledging that sometimes for a little while, you know, however long you feel like you need, it's cool to be in certain emotions like sadness or frustration and spaces of healing.

Lunden Souza: [00:16:56] But what was really interesting about that I that I highlighted a lot in my notes about the Heart math solution book and what they talked about in terms of emotional states is that actually anger is a great emotion to practice. Alchemizing Now what that means is when we relive, let's say, just yeah, we can relive different situations or when when feelings of anger arise or situations that we bring up bring up feelings of anger, we might be in a state of anger, let's say reliving that anger, reviving that anger or hurtful situations doesn't make it disappear, right? Like sometimes we just got to get things out With anger. It's different. It actually doesn't make it disappear. It reinforces that angry circuitry. I'll say that again. Reliving the anger and hurtful situations doesn't make it disappear. It reinforces that circuitry and it can actually do more damage to our heart when we continue to have those outbursts of anger continuously. And instead, what should we do when we feel angry, recognize the behavior and learn to behave differently? And that's really like what I said before about what coming out or what comes out might be a result of, you know, being inside and inner standing and like working through some of what you might be feeling and changing that. And that's not saying and it might be a little bit of like, you know, being it.

Lunden Souza: [00:18:38] My boyfriend always says, be it until you see it, which I love, instead of fake it until you make it, it might be a little bit of that, but the idea is not to push down those feelings of anger into a Tupperware, into the back of the fridge. And still, until it starts stinking and explodes and you have an explosion. Right? That's not the idea here. The idea is that we practice new ways of feeling and new ways of being. And to the point of sitting in that space of heart coherence, we get to practice what that feels like. And when we practice what something feels like and we get good at it, we can more easily access it. And so that space of heart coherence and eliciting joy and those feelings can come in handy, especially when practiced when we come to a situation where we might feel like, Oh yeah, this is where I would normally react with anger, this is where I would normally find myself in a potentially hurtful situation, and I want to do something different. So let me get into that state quickly and learning to do that quickly and practicing to get into that state quickly is super helpful. And yeah, there's a lot of techniques that they talk about in the Heartmath Solution book, which I won't go into detail on the podcast here. I think you should read the book. I don't throw my shoulds around lightly, but I think it's a really great read or audio listen, and to be honest, it's really short.

Lunden Souza: [00:19:57] If I'm not mistaken. I'm going to look on my audible app right now as I'm recording because I feel like it's super short, if I'm not mistaken. Let's see, Um, let me go back to the beginning. I usually listen to my audiobooks as well on like 1.2 speed, which is why I like audiobooks overall. Um, I'm not sure why it's not letting me see. So I think anyways, I think it's about an hour and a half or like a little under two hours. Um, the entirety of the book, the Heartmath solution, which is really cool because I mean, I love listening to audio books and longer books, but I think it's cool to be able to have quick reads or quick listens in that sense. And so I don't know, you know, I can think of moments where I've definitely reacted in anger and I can think of moments now, now where I've been in a situation where I'm like, normally I would react with much more intensity and much more anger. And I'm choosing in this moment to recognize that and feel that and change it. And it's such a weird, cool, challenging feeling and a part of it when I experienced it was like, Yeah, this immature, childish version of myself dying with that, if you will. Um, yeah, I can think of a moment where I got so angry that I got so angry at one of my ex-boyfriends because he didn't tell me something.

Lunden Souza: [00:21:30] He didn't communicate something to me that I thought he should communicate to me. So my way of showing him that he needed to communicate that to me was to grab a box that was on like the table that was full of gambling chips. They were like ones for a poker night or something, and I just threw the box at him towards him. Tomato, tomato. But I was far away on the other side that it didn't even come close to hitting him. It hit the couch and slid underneath the couch. And the, um. The chips went everywhere, like all over the floor. And I remember thinking like, oh, my gosh, that is so not what I wanted to do. But I didn't have the tools then to do it better, you know, And I threw shit and I was just angry and frustrated and I didn't know how to not do it better and I didn't know how to do it better at the time. And we're looking back now. I just I can totally remember the situation right when we go back, I'm sure we can think of something where we're just like, Oh, and afterwards we're like, Hm. And so it's never too late to do it better and it's never too late to go back to those situations and just kind of love on yourself a little bit and be like, Yeah, I was doing my best with the tools that I have that I had at the time, and now there was a particular situation with my current.

Lunden Souza: [00:22:49] Boyfriend, where I had this moment where I was really able to explain, just like I'm talking to you now with like clear dialogue, maybe a little bit more emotionally heightened slightly, but very clearly communicate how I was feeling, how it was frustrating that I felt that way and how I wanted to feel a different type of way. And I was working on it. And it was such a cool moment because I also acknowledged myself in that conversation where I was like, Normally I wouldn't do it this way. Normally I would have firehead and just like went through the roof, got super angry, you know, potentially thrown something, just been much more explosive in my behavior. And now because of a lot of this work internally and opening up my heart and having more compassion for myself and others throughout this process has helped me act differently. Right. But I could definitely recognize it, right? I was there. I was like in the moment, I could feel the heat coming up. And I just knew from my work in heart coherence. And then after what I just mentioned to you regarding anger and our ability to really, like change it into something more loving but not push it down, not put it away, actually change it in a way that does our body better than it would if we just every time we wanted to explode.

Lunden Souza: [00:24:06] And I can think of many times where I let my inner world just show in my outer world, or maybe even did it to the point of, like I said, masking and putting something away. And now I think with the help of this work and heart coherence and meditation and, you know, all of the stuff with NLP that I've been doing, doing and working on, I just feel like it's it's been so helpful for nervous system regulation and to not feel like we're always at cause or like I'll often say like Stretch Armstrong being pulled in all of the different directions. And even if we are doing a lot of things, we can be like, Oh, this is fun. I'm not Stretch Armstrong, you know, I'm actually like doing a dance this like weird sideways, you know, being pulled in different directions. Dance. If you're listening to me, you're like, What is she doing? If you're watching me, you're probably also like, What is she doing? But you know what I mean. We get to shift our perception. We get to shift our perception. And like I read at the beginning, you know, a lot of the messages and signals coming from our heart are going bypassed because we aren't taught to listen to it.

Lunden Souza: [00:25:09] And we're just like, Yeah, you know, our brain gives this signal, whatever. And it's like, actually, let's come back to the drawing board a little bit and understand and understand a little bit better. And so I highly suggest that you grab that book, the Heartmath solution, and give it a listen. Let me know if you've read it already, if you have anything to add. Right. Like I said, I've just listened to this. This was my third time listening to it, taking down some notes. And I think it's helpful when I'm in this learning process and curiosity process to also talk about it on the podcast or have conversations with friends on the side about it. Because I feel like just like with anything, it reinforces what we know and when we're learning. And so I appreciate this space here today to just kind of like talk it out and share with you how I talk it out. And if you have any aha moments or things you want to share, shoot me a message on Instagram or you can pretty much find me everywhere at Lifelike London. But I am especially responsive on Instagram. And then you can also respond to one of my emails if you want. And that directly directly goes to me, whether it's my weekly newsletter or my monthly updates or some other things I'm sending out via email, you can always hit reply and that'll go directly to me.

Lunden Souza: [00:26:17] And if you're listening to the this episode and you're like, Wait, I'm not on your email list, just go to lifelikelunden.com/calendar. That's the the little clip you heard at the beginning and you will be able to get my monthly mindset and life coaching calendar for free and then you'll be on my email list and you can hit reply and just be like, Hey, I listened to your episode on the heartmath and opening up your heart and heart coherence and things like that. And here's how it spoke to me. You could do that with any of the episodes, but especially this one. I'm just really like, Yeah, I feel like I've cracked open, if you will, and it's such a wonderful experience. And now I'm trying to put words to a lot of the experiences that I have been experiencing. So thank you for listening to the podcast. I appreciate you. Have a wonderful day and we'll see you at the next episode. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Self Love and Sweat the podcast. Hey, do me a favor. Wherever you're listening to this podcast, give us a review. This really helps a lot and share this with a friend. I'm only one person and with your help we can really spread the message of self love and sweat and change more lives all around the world. I'm  Souza reminding you that you deserve a life full of passion, presence and purpose, fueled by self, love and sweat. This podcast is a hit spot. Austria production.